Hi we are travelling to Kyoto, Takayama and Tokyo in April with our 18 Months Old.
We are vegetarian?
Any tips on how to travel around, what to see and specially where can we find vegetarian meals in each of the above cities.
Japan Trip - Vegetarian
vivekramkiran on 30/01/2019 - 11:21
Comments
Thanks Pyramid
Very easy to find vegetarian food. It's tofu heaven. Need to just check on some sauces, bonito, etc. to be sure whether they have meat derivatives or not.
I would be more concerned about taking an 18-month old child on an overseas holiday with plenty of travel once there. From memory, an 18-month old is still a bit of a handful; if your child is like that you may struggle to fully experience everything that would be on offer in Japan.
A quick google showed there should be plenty of options in Japan for vegetarians, but I haven't been so cannot directly comment.
I think you'd be ok, we went on a camping trip with a 5 month old. While it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows and we had a few things to think ahead on, it was significantly better than not going and just sitting at home.
something to know about the japanese is that they invest in their young and take care of the elderly.
you'll find alot of food courts and restuarants have provision for little kids,
i have taken both our kids in 2017 and 2018 and the youngest was 18 months at the time.
plenty of stuff for the kids to do, plenty of vegetarian options.
- Ueno park and zoo, go early if you want to see pandas
- osso bonno in tokyo, much like play centers here except on steroids larger, cleaner and other kids are nicer
- aquarium in osaka to see the whale shark
- yodabashi for toys
- tokyo disney, far better than LA and less crowded, japanese are more enthusiastic about dressing up
They are also exceedingly polite and would expect kids to be perfectly supervised at all times. OP should keep that in mind.
And looking for something to blame doesn't fly there. Not for a moment.
Only in Australia do TVs break themselves and passengers crash cars.
Japan is a bit cramped for kids in the central areas. Shops and restaurants can get small quite quickly, making it harder to find places that can accommodate strollers. But there's always options. A good one if you are in a busy area like Shibuya is to go into any large department store building and go to the top floors. They always have good (and fairly inexpensive) restaurants up there, and they are always fairly spacious.
But family restaurants (american diner style) and parents are all over the place too. Don't let the low birth rate fool you, Tokyo is filled with babies.
We took our kids to Tokyo a couple of years ago. There are strollers for hire in plenty of places, if you don't have one with you, there are escalators literally everywhere, and vending machines and convenience stores on every block in the city or suburbs, if you need a drink or snack so super convenient for families.
Tokyo Disney and Sanrio Puroland are popular for the kids, but there is also Odaiba which has some great options.
The downside was the walking — it's a huge place and despite Japan having the best train networks in the world, if you want to see a lot of different things, you will find yourself walking miles every day which will be more exhausting with young kids.the airbnb we stayed in both osaka and kyoto had strollers.
we also bought $19 umbrella strollers from Kmart and gifted them to the accommodation we were staying at the end of the trip.
Family Mart, 7-11 and Lawson.
I highly recommend the search feature to find all the many other times this exact question has been asked.
If you need a quick easy meal goto the food hall basements in the large department stores like Takashimaya - you will find many options - they are amazing.
We went to a little restaurant in Takayama many times that served delicious vegetarian food. The husband and wife that ran it were the nicest people. I'm pretty sure it was this one:
https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Restaurant_Review-g298113-d13…
Others here (and I'm sure you can find a similar list for Kyoto and Tokyo):
https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Restaurants-g298113-zfz10665-…
Also, in Takayama, a day trip to Shirakawa-go is very worthwhile:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Shirakawa-go
Nara (temples and deer) is a good day trip from Kyoto.
We are vegetarian?
You don't sound sure.
Yes, don't ask us, ask yourself OP. Only you'll know the answer to this one.
I saw that too and laughed.
Also I've been to Japan 17 times and still find that they think Western vegetarianism is a strange concept in restaurants/eateries.
Although the monks live this way.
I'm vegetarian and lived in Japan for 4 years.
How strict of a vegetarian are you?
for example - when you eat pizza do you ask if the cheese has animal rennet in it? because you won't eat animal rennet based cheese? or, is cheese just chesse.?
being vegetarian in Japan has its challenges.
for some restaurants the idea of "No Meat" does not exclude "small pieces of meat".
or dahsi (fish) sauce being the base for many foods.
Overall, most restaurants have something vegetarian.
If push comes to shove then there are plenty of ready-to-go meals at convenience stores.
There is also the reliable Saizeriya "Italian" chain restaurant - this is my easy vegetarian option. they are everywhere and are inexpesnsive.
A good phone app to have is "HappyCow". which lists a lot of vegetarian or vegan restaurants, or restaurants that have those options available.
Well Okonomiyaki (is that spelt right?) and tempura are 2 options not the healthiest though.
If you eat fish well you’ll be spoilt for choice.
Okonomiyaki is often made with Bonito (dried fish) flakes on top.
It's added as a finishing touch.
I used to tell the server to not add it but often it would come with them. Maybe it was because my Japanese was (how do you say in English) inelegant .
I would just remove it.
Sometimes when you travel you have to compromise.
search for vegetarian in google maps when you are there. Plenty of restaurants. i recommend agedashi tofu, which is common on menus in izakayas. Gobou is another root vegetable that is amazing as tempura. Kimpira Gobou is a root vegetable salad I can also recommend.
'Begeterian' is the pronunciation for vegetarian. Its common enough in Japan. You'll be fine. 'Begeterian desu' will let your wait staff know. Use google translate to ask for recommendations.
And maybe learn the different types of onigiri. 梅干 is the kanji for umeboshi, , which is the pickled plum, 昆布 for the konbu seaweed. Onigiri are in all of the konbini's and they will help you survive on the cheap.
Also, badufeeshamano let's people know you are begetarian.
Also learn to say what you don't eat, "Niku wa tabenai" "Sakana wa tabenai" "Dashi wa tabenai". Dashi will be in lots of things that locals might consider "vegetarian".
Kombinis are everywhere and you can get a good veggie meal, rice balls (plain, plum, pickled gourd), salad. If you're feeing brave, then there's also natto.
Kombini = convenience store
Crepes!
Kamo's in Kyoto is great. There is T's Tantan in Tokyo. Freshness Burger does a great veggie burger.
Look for places doing shojin ryori cuisine
Veggie options are getting better in Japan.
I heard they serve rice over there. Rice is vegetarian right?
Tofu! Some yrs ago, pre kids, We went to a restaurant in Kyoto that specialises in nothing but tofu.
We just came back from Japan. We travel there often. Kids have been going there since about 3 mths old. They are now 2 and 4.
It can be exhausting travelling with a kid hitting the terrible 2 stage if your interested in seeing the touristy stuff. They surely don't care! Lol.
Enjoy the trip.
Having travelled to Kyoto and Tokyo last September as a vegetarian family with 2 kids (aged 4 & 1), we had real trouble finding vego food that the kids wouldn't be fussy over close to the sights we wanted to see. We ended up cutting over half our itinerary out as it took so long to get anywhere.
We also found in Kyoto not many places had child seats for dining, so you might want to consider taking a small, table-attachable one if your toddler is active. I used google translate (offline mode with a camera) a fair bit to try and check for meat ingredients in Lawsons, but your best bet is probably learning a couple of japanese phrases (such as "excuse me", "this one", "that one", "please", "thank you") to use when asking staff about a food combined with the relevant translation picture on your phone from http://justhungry.com/japan-dining-out-cards. I ate a LOT of cream cheese sandwiches from Lawsons/7-11, the best ones had fruit in too. Watch out that a lot of the mini rice snacks with english translations like "egg rice" or "friend rice" on have meat hidden inside. Like one of the other guys above, I ended up having to pick the meat out of a few meals.
Our best meal in Tokyo was Uobei Sushi where you order from an ipad and the food is delivered to your seat by train. Dishes are small and cheap so once you find something they like you can keep ordering. Plus the ordering and delivery method kept our kids amused for ages.
The dining out card link posted by @joqob above is good. We used it when travelling through on our 10 day trip in March last year. We are "strict" vegetarians and really struggled to find food without some sort of fish variant in the sauce - most places used oyster sauce, fish sauce or dried fish (bonito) in the meals.
We ended up eating a lot of Italian pasta and pizzs from the chain 'Saizeriya' - the food was a little bland but we mixed out own sauces to the pasta and made do. We also carried with us luckily a few soup sachets and pre cooked food that would last a while - We just put it in the hotel fridges.
The deserts from 7-11 / Lawsons were cheap and good but other than that struggled to find vego food that didnt require us to pick things out
The google translation app was hit and miss.
We found a couple of indian/nepalese restaurants in a basement about 10mins walk from nissan square which was a good change but was on the expensive end
I would strongly advise to carry pre made meals with you that will not go off easily as well as snacks for kids etc. You can buy chips / pocky / biscuits etc from big department stores if needed. Fruits are extremely expensive there so you may want to take some and use them in the initial couple of days.
I would recommend you take dispossable cuttlerly / plates with you as the hotels dont provide these unless you plan on staying in airbnb's and even then its limited. Also take plastic bags as you usually have to carry all your rubbish back to the room
The Happy cow app is somewhat useful but we found some places had closed. There is a CoCo CUrry place that offers rice and vegan curry that was quite tasty - The curry comes in a pouch and they just heat it up in hot water so its not even cooked in the same pots (be careful as their vegeterain option isnt really vegetarian) - we opted to always ask for vegan
Here
Also there are vegan resturants in Kyoto and Tokyo so check on tripadvisor or happycow.net (talking about this based on personal experience)